The line they crossed separates the possibly legitimate, though dirty and distasteful tactics of spies from the impossible-to-justify, ?let?s hope it never becomes public? stratagems of an out-of-control surveillance establishment.

Before the year ends, I wanted to capture a few points that stand out for me about what is unquestionably the biggest news story of 2013.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk ? regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing?

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2013 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Clickhere to read other blog posts in this series.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In 2013, patent trolls continued to run rampant, suing everyone from app developers to small businesses to podcasters. But the trolls’ abusive tactics finally caught up to them in the policy arena?to put it lightly, they had a miserable year. All three branches of government have set their sights on patent reform, and the fundamental question of the patentability of software has reentered the conversation.

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2013 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Clickhere to read other blog posts in this series.

This year the public got some hints of the scale on which governments are using electronic surveillance to spy on all of us. We learned how pervasively compromised our communications infrastructure is, and how cavalierly governments have spliced, bribed, lied, hacked, cozened, and secret-ordered their way into network backbones. We saw that individual Internet engineers were seen as legitimate hacking targets. We saw that spy agencies speak casually of mastering, controlling, dominating the Internet.